The Education Network Best Ten List Articles
In today’s digital age, the success of your website in attracting potential customers is crucial. Many customers use your website as their first point of contact with your business, so creating a positive impression and building a lasting relationship with them is essential. Read further to find out the top 10 benefits of having a multilingual website.
You probably already know that a user-friendly and visually appealing website design is crucial, but personalization is also essential in enhancing the customer experience. This includes tailoring product suggestions, targeted advertising, and ensuring your website and its content are available in languages accessible to visitors.
With 88% of customers unlikely to return to a site after a bad experience, it is important to consider language when thinking about personalization. As globalization and cross-border e-commerce continue to grow, a multilingual website can be a game-changer for your business and is increasingly becoming a competitive necessity.
In this article, I will delve into the benefits of having a multilingual website for your business.
1. Increased reach
Creating a multilingual website is mandatory if you plan to access new audiences by going global or targeting a specific geographical location other than your main one.
Targeting multiple languages will massively increase your audience, bring more readers and customers, improve your international SEO rankings due to lower competition, and increase your brand awareness and market share.
If this hasn’t convinced you yet, check the table below to find out which are the top 10 most spoken languages worldwide:
| Language | Total Speakers | Native | Non-Native |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. English | 1,132 million | 379 million | 753 million |
| 2. Mandarin (Chinese) | 1,117 million | 918 million | 199 million |
| 3. Hindi | 615 million | 341 million | 274 million |
| 4. Spanish | 534 million | 460 million | 74 million |
| 5. French | 280 million | 77 million | 203 million |
| 6. Arabic | 274 million | 245 million | 29 million |
| 7. Bengali | 265 million | 228 million | 37 million |
| 8. Russian | 258 million | 154 million | 104 million |
| 9. Portuguese | 234 million | 221 million | 13 million |
| 10. Indonesian | 198 million | 43 million | 155 million |
Now ask yourself: How much would you benefit in traffic, leads, and sales if you could also target these audiences?
A multilingual website can also be helpful if you have many non-native English speakers in your target market, as it allows them to access your content in a language they are more comfortable with.
2. Better User experience
Improved user experience is another benefit of a multilingual website. Visitors more comfortable reading and interacting in their language are likely to have a better experience on your site, which can lead to higher engagement and satisfaction levels.
A multilingual website can also make it easier for visitors to navigate and understand the content on your site, as it provides clear and concise translations of all your text and multimedia content.
3. Online Trust & Credibility
Having a multilingual website can also enhance your credibility. By offering your content in multiple languages, you demonstrate that you are committed to meeting the needs of a diverse audience. This can help to build trust with your visitors and potentially increase conversions.
A multilingual website can also make it easier for international customers to do business with you, as they can access your site and make purchases in their language.
4. Better SEO
In terms of search engine optimization (SEO), a multilingual website can be beneficial in several ways. First, it can make it easier for search engines to understand and index your content, as it provides clear and concise translations of your text and multimedia content. This can help to increase your visibility in search results and drive more traffic to your site.
Additionally, a multilingual website can help you to rank for keywords in different languages, which can be especially useful if you are targeting a specific market or language group.
5. Gain a Competitive Edge
Finally, having a multilingual website can give you a competitive edge in today’s globalized market.
By allowing you to target new audiences and reach more potential customers, a multilingual website can help you to stand out in a crowded market and increase your overall competitiveness. This can be especially useful if you compete with other businesses or organizations that are only available in one language.
6. Cost-effective Marketing
Nowadays, a company’s website is often the center of its marketing efforts. It is a cost-effective and far-reaching way to promote your offerings. It is logical to consider including a multilingual website as part of your international marketing strategy.
7. Better User Insights
By having content in languages you already target or intend to target, you will gather insights into how your audience acts and their questions, doubts, and fears.
First, you will be able to analyze the behavior of users from a particular territory or users that speak a given language. After that, you can use this information to create the necessary content that answers these users’ doubts so that you will get better conversions.
8. Improving brand image
Nowadays, businesses have to flex in whatever way they can to impress customers, and let’s face it – a multilingual site is a flex.
A site in many languages proves that you’re running a global business. These things are highly reflected in the customer’s eyes, who’ll associate your business with quality and professionalism.
9. Improved customer support
There are many situations when you have to offer support in more languages than your target audience. Due to globalization, products are now used around the globe, and customers may need help in their language.
For instance, Asus offers support information (usage manuals, drivers, forums, Q&As) in over 70 distinct languages.
A multilingual website can allow you to provide customer support in a customer’s native language, leading to improved customer satisfaction.
10. Better cultural sensitivity
Providing content in multiple languages can demonstrate respect for other cultures and help avoid misunderstandings or cultural insensitivity.
How can I make my site multilingual?
To make your website multilingual, you need translation software to manage the translated content, and everything related.
The two main types of translator software:
- Auto-translate: These plugins use online services such as Microsoft and Google Translate to generate translated versions of all your website content. The translated content is not perfect, as would be done by a translation company. But with all the advancements in neural translation, it’s close to that. These plugins can consume less data storage than self-translate ones as the translation is often ‘on-demand.’
- Manual-translate: Also known as multilingual plugins, these plugins need you to enter the translated content. While this can be time-consuming and costly as it requires the services of a professional translator, the results are generally excellent.
If you have a small or medium website and want to target 1-3 new markets, it would probably be better to opt for a self-translate and get the help of a translation service to provide the content. However, you will have to pay a translation service to update the translated pages to match the original whenever you change a page.
On the other hand, if your website has hundreds of pages or products and you want to target 4+ new local audiences, then an auto-translate one would probably suit you better. Otherwise, the cost and time to create all the translations will go through the roof.
We recommend checking Linguise, a service that is both inexpensive and powerful that uses Google Neural Network to translate content almost as well as professionals do it. At a fraction of the cost.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the benefits of having a multilingual website are numerous and can help businesses and organizations to reach new audiences, improve user experience, enhance credibility, and increase competitiveness.
Whether you are looking to expand your business to new markets, attract international customers, or improve the user experience for visitors to your site, a multilingual website can be an effective tool for achieving these goals.
